


God Bless Us, Evan Chambers

by Marks



Category: Greek
Genre: Christmas, Fix-It, Multi, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marks/pseuds/Marks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know "A Christmas Carol"? It's like that, only with Evan fixing all of his stupid mistakes instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God Bless Us, Evan Chambers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stealstheashes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stealstheashes/gifts).



> I reaaaaaally wanted to write your request as soon as I saw your Yuletide letter, and I hope you don't mind the change from "It's a Wonderful Life" to "A Christmas Carol." Dickens is just easier for dick jokes.

Christmas Eve didn't mean much to Evan. Really. It totally didn't, and he was going to keep repeating that to himself until he actually believed it, or until Christmas was over, whichever came first. He had a mountain of paperwork to do for the IFC, presidential things that he had to do _by himself_ and by gum he was going to get them done, Christmas Eve be damned.

Evan shook his head. Did he just think 'by gum'? That was kind of ridiculous.

Honestly, he had no idea what to do with himself. All but one holiday he could remember was filled with Chambers-related drama and the one exception had been this past Thanksgiving. He didn't know how he screwed up so royally in between then and now, either. Or rather he _knew_, but wished that he didn't. This whole year had been a mess: no family, no trust fund, no respect, and now almost no friends. Yeah, he had Calvin and Rebecca still, but they both went home for winter break already. Technically he guessed Casey didn't hate him, either, but it wasn't like they were exactly on speaking terms. It made sense, Casey picking her boyfriend over, well, her ex-boyfriend, but still. Evan missed her. He didn't know how to be alone on Christmas.

"Man up, Chambers," he said out loud, apparently forgoing dignity in exchange for talking to himself. "You don't need them. You don't need anyone!"

The empty Omega Chi house didn't bother answering, so Evan got back to work. Well, he tried, but he got bored about ten minutes in, his eyelids growing heavier every time he signed here and initialed there. Paperwork didn't exactly cut him up.

+

Someone shook Evan's shoulder.

"Ten more minutes, Mom," Evan said.

"Ew," the someone replied, and shook harder.

Evan snorted and lifted his head. "Whaaaat? What. I'm up."

"Thank God. Evan, I've got to say that drooling all over your desk thing? Not exactly your most attractive moment. I hope whatever's under your face wasn't anything important because it's more DNA evidence than paper now."

What the hell? He was clearly hallucinating. "Frannie?" he said, hoping he really _was_ hallucinating. It'd be better than what he was seeing, which was Frannie with her hands on her hips, shaking her head and regarding him with barely repressed disgust.

"Alone on Christmas? That's pathetic even for you."

"Shut up," Evan mumbled. "Hey! What are you doing judging me? You're the one who showed up at my frat house the day before Christmas to wake me up in the middle of the night. We're not dating anymore. Hell, I haven't even talked to you in like two months."

"Shows what you know," Frannie said. "I'm not actually here at all." So he was hallucinating. That, at least, was a relief. Well, not the Evan hallucinating one of his exes thing, because that was a little worrisome and maybe he should cut down on caffeine a little, but the Frannie not really being there thing. "I've come to warn you."

Evan sat up straight and scrubbed his hands over his face. "Warn me about what? That shopping off the rack doesn't fit as well?"

"Well, yes," Frannie said. "Seriously, you look terrible. I know you gave up your money, but you're about two steps away from living in a cardboard box. When was the last time you showered?"

"Frannie."

"You smell. That's not my fault."

"_Frannie_, I promise you that I will go bathe in the finest perfumes and oils if you could just _tell me why you're here already_."

Frannie shrugged. "It's your funeral." She cleared her throat. "Evan Chambers, the powers that be have decided you need to learn a lesson about friendship and good decision-making skills and stuff. Tonight you will be visited by _three spirits_, each appearing on the hour."

"Great, Charles Dickens," Evan said. He checked his watch, which read 12:01. "So I have fifty-nine minutes before some ghost comes and bothers me why? It's not like I don't know I'm miserable."

"Hey, I just say what they tell me to say."

"So why'd they send you?"

"I told you, I'm not really me. The real Frannie had to leave Cyprus-Rhodes because all her friends hated her. She made terrible decisions and it cost her two sororities, her boyfriend, and her school. You're not hopeless _yet_, Evan."

Evan looked down at the scattered paperwork on his desk. "Sure I'm not. Well. Bring on ghost number one, Frannie."

"When the clock strikes one."

"I'll leave out milk and cookies. Just go, okay?"

"Hey, if you don't believe me, that's not my problem. Merry Christmas, Ev." Frannie wiggled her fingers at Evan and walked away.

Evan watched her go, rubbing his eyes hard when she kind of dematerialized and disappeared instead of using the door. He glanced down at his paperwork again, and quickly wrote off the idea of working on it some more. The letters were running all together like alphabet soup, so he got up and went to bed.

For a second -- just a _second_ \-- he considered leaving out milk and cookies like he'd promised Frannie, but he wound up falling asleep while the empty Omega Chi house creaked all around him.

+

_BONG_

Evan sat bolt upright in bed, unaware that his house had turned into a clock tower in the night. He usually woke up to, like, Lady GaGa blaring from his alarm clock, not the chimes of Big Ben two inches from his ear.

"She did tell you one," Calvin said sensibly, perched on the edge of Evan's bed.

"Bro!" Evan said. "I thought you flew back home yesterday. Flight get canceled?"

Calvin shook his head. "Nope, just your brain supplying familiar framework for what's about to happen. It's actually pretty interesting from a psychological standpoint, but we don't really have time to analyze you right now." He stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. "Actually, I don't know if we'd have enough time if we had _years_."

"Low blow."

"Well, are you ready to go?" Calvin stuck out his hand and waited.

"Dude, it's one in the morning on Christmas. Even the bars are closed. Where do you think you're taking me?"

Calvin rolled his eyes. "Do you ever pay attention when people talk to you? Spiritual representation when the clock strikes one! I have Ghost of Christmas Past duties to perform! Come on, you know your Dickens."

"_You_ know your Dickens."

"Nice to know you resort to homophobia when you're panicking," Calvin said. "You're better than that, Chambers. Do we have to add your slightly confused sexuality to the reasons you could use therapy?"

Evan wrinkled up his forehead, but all Calvin did was offer out his hand again. This time Evan took it, and just like that, they blinked out of existence.

+

"Whoa," Evan said. "What just happened?"

"Look around," Calvin said.

It was sunny out, way warmer than it had been even in the CRU warm weather bubble. Calvin and Evan were standing by a lake, and there were guys walking by them in shorts and t-shirts. Everyone was six or seven years younger than Evan, and he gasped when he realized where they were.

Calvin leaned in and spoke into Evan's ear. "_Now_ do you believe me?" Evan nodded. "Well, then you know the drill. You can see them, they can't see us."

A younger Evan was standing by a log cabin, a way-too-expensive trunk by his side, and a miserable expression on his face. It was the first summer he wound up at Camp Kitchiwawa, and he remembered how much he didn't want to be there, but wound up there anyway because his mother wanted him to 'make connections and network.' Being a Chambers wasn't anything close to normal.

Just then, another kid passed by. He wasn't dressed in the camp's uniform, instead wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and cutoff denim shorts. He had black knee socks pulled all the way up, his feet shoved into ratty Birkenstocks. Evan made a note to tease Cappie about the sock-and-shoe combination later, only to remember a second too late that he couldn't.

Past-Cappie paused from throwing a hackey-sack into the air and tilted his head to one side. "Are you the camp's new living statue? I hear those things are all the rage in Europe."

"What? No," other Evan said, confused, but already on the verge of laughter. "My parents made me come here. I'm a Chambers."

"I'm a Cappie!"

Evan remembered this moment. It was the first time he'd ever made a friend who didn't care about who he was, and just seeing his younger self and Cappie grinning at each other made something ache in his chest. Evan looked sideways at Calvin. "Can we go?"

Calvin nodded. "Just one more thing to show you."

+

They were back at Cyprus-Rhodes, but they weren't back at the Omega Chi house. Instead, they were standing in the hallway of Evan's freshman dorm, the faint scent of sweatsocks, spoiled takeout, and pot lingering in the air, the telltale smell of college kids experiencing their first taste of freedom. The door they were standing in front of had Evan and Cappie's names written on it, and Evan threw a worried glance at Calvin.

"You can go in," Calvin said, gesturing.

Evan tried to grab the doorknob, but his hand phased right through it, like he was Kitty Pryde without the spandex. "Huh," he said, looking at his hand, before walking right through the door. Inside the room it was nighttime, and both beds were occupied. Actually, one of the beds was double-occupied, Cappie and Casey kissing while Evan slept two feet away. Casey was laughing quietly and shushing Cappie, saying, "Don't wake Evan up."

This hadn't happened just once. When Evan was still pretending being the Three Musketeers didn't kill him on the inside, he used to fake sleep to give them their privacy all the time. And it wasn't like they were ever screwing in the next bed over. Even if Cappie wouldn't have had a problem with that, Casey would have. That's one thing Evan loved about her; she balanced Cappie, brought him back down to earth even when he was floating on Cloud 9.

"Would you want that? For Evan to wake up?" Cappie said.

"Shh, Cap." Casey laughed again. "Maybe," she admitted after a second. "I don't know. It wouldn't be so bad."

Now that. Evan swallowed. That he definitely didn't remember.

Cappie didn't answer, just kissed her again, slow and quiet enough that Evan found himself fidgeting and unable to look away.

"Okay, we can go back now," Evan said to Calvin. Calvin nodded and touched his arm.

+

Evan woke up alone in his bed. "Dickens, you're a dick."

+

_BONG BONG_

Evan had somehow managed to doze off again after his little blast from the past, which he chalked up to magical intervention or maybe just a layered lucid dream, like when you dream about a monster chasing you through the woods, only to wake up naked in class, only to wake up _again_.

Like right now, Evan woke up when the mystery clock struck two, but it still felt like half a dream, Rebecca smiling down at him while wearing a smoking hot Mrs. Claus outfit and bright red lipstick. Because seriously, he'd had that dream once or twice before. Who hadn't?

"Let me guess," he said, struggling into a sitting position. "Ghost of Christmas Present."

"Uh-huh," Rebecca said, climbing onto the foot of Evan's bed and jumping up and down. That had been part of Evan's last sexy Mrs. Claus dream starring Rebecca Logan, too. "Do you know anyone else who better represents the joy of living in the now?" She flopped down into a sitting position, grinning wide. "Because I don't."

Evan's mouth twitched into a smile. "I really don't."

"So are you ready to go see what the people you care about are up to right now? I'm kind of on a schedule. I mean, it's not like you're actually cutting into my Christmas or anything because I'm not really here? But I was totally busy hooking up with this cute caterer from my dad's macrobiotic non-denominational holiday party, and even my astral self is pissed off about getting pulled away from that."

"Well, we don't want that." Evan held out his hand.

+

Christmas with the Cartwrights. That had all the makings of a holiday variety special, maybe with the Osmonds walking through at any minute.

Rusty and Casey were both sitting on a sofa in front of a fireplace wearing horrible matching Christmas sweaters, bedazzled and appliquéd within an inch of their little knitted lives, and if Evan didn't learn any lessons from this night, at least he had that bit of blackmail at his disposal.

"Jesus," Evan muttered.

"I know, right?" Rebecca giggled. "I wish I had my camera. I'd email it to everyone I knew. Twice."

Casey looked down at her sweater and frowned, like she knew they were talking about her. She jumped to her feet and gave her parents a tight-lipped smile. "I'll be right back." Rebecca and Evan followed as she headed to her room, a pink-decorated nightmare filled with still more blackmail fodder, and grabbed her phone.

"Hey, Cap," she said a minute later.

"That's our cue!" Rebecca said cheerfully. She tugged on Evan's arm, and they were whisked into the Kappa Tau house.

"Oh." Evan instinctually took a step backward. "I can't be here."

"Dude. They can't see you. Chill out a second."

The Kappa Taus still left in the house were gathered in their common room, all wearing black armbands and lifting red plastic cups in a toast. "To Wade, Jeremy, and Ferret," Beaver said sadly, sticking out his bottom lip and pouting. "May we never forget our fallen brothers this holiday."

"And while we're at it, let's curse Omega Chi and the dick, Evan Chambers," Heath added, shaking his head. "I can't believe he ruined my last Christmas here."

"Hear, hear!" the brothers all shouted and drank. In the corner of the room, Cappie yelled, "Some of us are on the phone!" and ran upstairs.

Evan looked at Rebecca and raised his eyebrows. "I guess we're following him?"

"Ooh, you're good at this game."

Cappie was lying on his bed when they got upstairs, phone tucked under his ear. "So tell me what you're wearing, Case. Is it a little Santa outfit with fur trim and cute stockings?"

Rebecca looked down at herself and then grinned at Evan. "You guys have similar taste."

Evan shrugged. "It's a running theme. If only he knew what Casey was really wearing."

"No, come on, you know I can't do that," Cappie said. "I love you, but I don't care that he's alone on Christmas." He paused. "Shut up, I'm not lying. And okay, _okay_, let's assume for a second that I am lying. He still sold me out for the stupid Omega Chis who care more about his money than him, and he got three of my brothers expelled in the process. It's not on me, Casey." Cappie paused again, his face going soft. "Yes, of course I meant that. I know you love me, too."

Rebecca stuck a finger down her throat and made gagging sounds. Evan knew he should join in, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. She reached up and ruffled his hair, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Time's up," Rebecca said.

+

Evan woke up alone again.

"This sucks," he said to no one.

+

_BONG BONG BONG_

Evan sighed deeply when the clock struck three. He'd fallen back asleep after Rebecca left, so it had to be some magical thing because there was no way he would have fallen asleep otherwise. The thought of seeing his future filled him with dread.

"Better get this over with," he said, sitting up and shivering when a cold gust of air whipped around his room.

Someone in an Amphora robe was standing at the end of his bed. Evan couldn't make out their face because their hood was pulled all the way forward, but he knew how this Dickensian stuff went and had a pretty good idea who was under that robe.

"I don't like you," Evan said. The guy in the robe shrugged. It seemed a little apologetic. "I hope they're paying you for this." Evan climbed out of bed and grabbed the Ghost of Christmas Future's shoulder.

+

There was a middle-aged guy sitting at a rickety card table with a drink in his hand. He lived in a dinky apartment, not much in the way of furniture, a tiny tree losing its needles sitting in the corner. Evan recognized himself right away, the little bald spot at the back of the guy's head a match to his father's.

The older Evan shivered and looked around in confusion, but after a second he went back to his drink and reading a clip-out from a newspaper.

Evan looked from his older self to the Ghost, who held out his arm and urged Evan closer, so Evan stepped in and looked over the other Evan's shoulder. The clip-out was a wedding announcement, yellowed with age and curling in at the corners, Cappie and Casey's faces smiling up at him.

"Fuck," he said, stumbling back a step. He wanted to pretend that he was happy for them, or even that he was just jealous of Cappie, but it wasn't that. He _missed_ them, missed both of them, and he couldn't pretend that he was happy that they had each other. Or rather that they _only_ had each other. God, he'd messed up so bad.

The Ghost of Christmas Future put his hand on Evan's shoulder. Evan turned around as the Ghost pulled down his hood and Evan found himself looking into his own face.

"It's just me, myself, and I here, Evan," the Ghost said. "You think you can stop lying to yourself now? Come on, you know Frannie was right; you're not hopeless _yet_."

Evan swallowed hard. "I think I want to go back home."

The Ghost nodded and pulled his hood back up. "Merry Christmas, dude."

"Well, at least someone said it," Evan said and laughed.

+

_I want your love and I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad romance, whoa-oa-oa_

Evan groaned and slapped at his alarm clock until his palm connected with snooze. Sunlight streamed through the window doing its damnedest to stab him in the eyeballs with its stupid cheeriness.

"Wait." He rolled onto his side and squinted at his clock's LED readout, which clearly displayed 12-25. "Yes, it's still Christmas!" he shouted and leapt out of bed.

The Omega Chi house was still empty, and Evan barely took the time to brush his teeth and shove his feet into sneakers before throwing on his jacket and running out. He ran all the way down Greek Row until he found himself in front of the Kappa Tau house. Then he took a deep breath, dug his phone out of his pocket, and made a call. The person on the other end picked up.

"Mom?" he said. "Merry Christmas."

"Evan," his mother said, clearly relieved. "It's good to hear from you."

Evan let out a breath. "You, too. Do you think... I mean, I know it's the holidays and you're probably busy all day, but could we talk soon? About things."

"Yes, I think that could be arranged," she said. "Your father and I were probably too hard on you. It's just that we forget you're not Patrick sometimes, and." His mother sighed. "Well, I'm sure we can work something out after the New Year. Does that sound good?"

"That sounds great," Evan said, already knocking on the Kappa Tau's front door. "Listen, I've got to go right now. There's something I have to do, but we'll talk later, okay?"

"All right. Merry Christmas, Evan."

When his mother hung up, Evan started banging on the door in earnest, even kicking it a few times for good measure. It was hard getting a Kappa Tau out of bed on a regular day, let alone a holiday, but eventually the door clicked open. Evan didn't know if he was relieved or terrified to see Cappie on the other side of the door.

Both. Yeah, definitely both.

Before he could overthink it or get preemptively punched, Evan surged forward and kissed Cappie on the mouth, quick, hard, and to the point.

"I'm sorry I was an asshole," he said, jumping down the steps and putting himself out of swinging range. He was lucky that Cappie had just woken up and his reactions were about as fast as a baby sloth's. All Cappie seemed able to do was blink at him and open and shut his mouth. "I'm going to fix everything," Evan rushed on. "I talked to my mom and I don't know what's going to happen yet, but whatever my parents and I decide, I'll get your brothers back into school. It's not their fault I'm a mess. Or was."

"Uh-huh," Cappie said, nodding dumbly. "Did you just kiss me?"

Evan waved vaguely. "Yeah, but I'm not doing that again until we get a rental car. Do you know how far Casey's house is from here? Do you think we can be there by lunchtime? I mean, I know you're missing her. So am I, and I have to do that to her, too, with you there. Hopefully she won't slap me even if I deserve it."

"Did you just _kiss_ me?"

"Cappie," Evan said, rolling his eyes. "Keep up. I'm trying to apologize to you. I'll buy you pancakes."

Cappie tilted his head. "Free pancakes?"

"Yeah, dude," Evan said. "There's got to be an IHOP around here with as much Christmas spirit as me."

"I'll get my keys," Cappie said, running back into the house.

Evan waited just inside the door and peered inside. The Kappa Tau house was in shambles, Beaver draped over the back of the couch. He giggled, raising his head to smile drunkenly at Evan with no trace of recognition on his face.

"God bless us, everyone," Beaver told Evan solemnly. Then he hiccupped and passed out again.

Cappie ran back down the stairs and jangled his keys in Evan's face. "Come on, Lame-bers. I'm not an easy date."

Evan smiled when Cappie dropped his arm around Evan's shoulders and led him away. Maybe Dickens wasn't such a dick after all.


End file.
